The Shooter

desk, with a small drop of coffee spilling out, and both her fists became tightened balls. I pointed to the stress ball on the side of her desk but was rewarded with a more intense glare. “But I get it, you know?”
“Get what?”
“If there is a killer out there, I get why they’re targeting the lawyers. The cops had done their jobs in arresting the assailant. The system was doing its job, trying to put these people away, but these defense lawyers were creating the problem. They’re the ones that are getting guilty people off.”
“You’re saying that if those clients didn’t have great defense lawyers, then those rapists would be spending their best years behind bars?” I tapped my fingers on the edge of the desk. “What about Waltz’s will? Where does all that money go?”
“To a brother and a sister. One lives in Canada and the other lives in Europe. When they were informed on the phone…” Casey took a sip of her coffee as she read the police file that Daley had handed us earlier. “It says that neither of them had talked to Waltz in more than five years. The report notes that while neither sibling seemed upset, they weren’t surprised either. We’ve got statements from the siblings, but neither were in the country at the time of death, so we can cross them off.”
“This was an easy write-up for the cops.” I kicked my feet up on the desk and leaned my head on the back of my chair, staring at the ceiling. “Waltz had the gun in his hand. There was gun residue on his fingers. No-one else was seen near the apartment. The recipients of his estate had nothing to do with him. It’s all very simple. If I was a cop, I’d be writing it up as suicide as well.”
Casey took out a cloth from the top drawer of her desk, wiped the spilt coffee, and then folded the cloth, before placing it back inside the top drawer. Her desk was neat and ordered, and the polar opposite to mine. A single photo—her dark hair loose, large smile and an arm draped over her 8-year-old niece’s shoulder—was the only evidence of having a life outside of the office, everything else was neatly stacked or hidden in drawers.
“You know what, you’re rather poetic this morning. I particularly loved the Shakespeare reference. ‘Mortal coil’—was that Hamlet or Macbeth?” I mused, still staring at the ceiling.
“I think it was Mac-I-Don’t-Give-a-Crap.”
Casey glared at me from across the desk. The caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet.
When I offered to employ her as a co-investigator, she jumped at the change. A former investigative journalist, she was fired when a co-worker attacked her and came off second best. Casey had a fire in her belly, and found it hard to contain her rage, but that sort of gritty attitude was needed in this job.
I pointed at the picture on Casey’s desk. “So, what sort of cake did she have last night?”
“Grace is the coolest kid,” Casey filled with pride. “She decided on a Spiderman ice-cream cake. And she made us sing the birthday song twice before we could have the first piece, and then again before the second piece.” Casey thought back to the night before, sitting at her sister’s small dining room table, just the two of them and her niece, the only family she had in the world.
“Spiderman, hey? Didn’t you buy her a fairy house?” I smirked.
“What, a girl can’t be into superheroes? Damn Jack, keep up with the feminist movement already.”
“Sorry I asked.” I raised my hands in surrender.
Casey adored her niece. Her own memories didn’t quite reach back to her real parents, only the first foster home she was ever placed in with her sister Nicole at the age of five. Luckily, Family Services had always kept the two together, no matter how many homes they’d been bounced from. Even now as an investigator, Casey had never been able to dig up information on her parents. Before that first foster home, it was like Casey and Nicole May never even existed; just two little girls who appeared from nowhere, wanted by nobody.
“Alright, enough of your chit-chat.” Casey said as her fingers typed at the speed of light. “We might actually have a serial killer running around murdering the good people of Chicago. So, I also want to have a bit more of a look into Waltz’s last case. The name of Waltz’s last rapist client, was it Chesterfield? Perhaps the client told Waltz a secret that he didn’t want getting out.”
I punched my computer keyboard with the speed of a heavy sloth. Typing wasn’t my thing. I was a lot more comfortable on the streets than in an office. “Chesterfield did do a bit of time.” I read the information off a news website. “But only five months before Waltz came back with an appeal, he’d apparently found some new evidence that had been ‘lost’ in the lab. There was DNA on the victim that didn’t match Chesterfield. The forensics misrepresented it and Waltz used that to create enough doubt and Chesterfield walked. It was headline news. Very controversial. Chesterfield only walked out of prison five days ago and the media outrage was massive.”
“I remember seeing it all over the news last week. That interview on CBS This Morning with Jonathon DiMarco was vicious and had the whole city talking about the corruption of the legal system. He really went for the jugular.” Casey raised her head as soon as she realized what she’d said. “Ha. You know, I was only speaking metaphorically but… I don’t suppose you think there’s a chance he literally went for the jugular, do you?”
“I’m not sure an ex-police captain would want to get his hands dirty like that, but he’s certainly passionate about the dirty lawyer thing. He’s going to